Such distances deadened my head, imagination unable to register the sight of endless sea. While Rose played with the knobs on his Dalton Computer – ‘You can do anything with it, except fry eggs’ – we others were supposed to think up questions. Wilcox, still wearing his hat, stopped coughing long enough to comment: ‘This place seems at the end of our range, Skipper, and the wind may not play ball with us. Is there a fill-up station on the way?’
Bennett smiled. ‘I’ve stared at the chart till I’m blue in the face and still haven’t conjured one up. Nevertheless, I shouldn’t worry if I were you. We do have auxiliary tanks to give a range of two thousand five hundred miles, so we shouldn’t be forced to ditch on the way. I wish you’d suck some Zubes for that cough, though. When the trip’s over we’ll send you to Switzerland.’
‘It’s only ‘flu, Skipper.’
Nash folded an old Daily Mail into his jacket pocket. ‘And where’s the juice coming from for the flight to Freemantle?’
‘A ship will meet us in a convenient stretch of calm water.’ He waved his stick so that no one could be certain where it was, and I couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t being sarcastic. ‘All hands will set to with gusto, and stock up the tanks.’
The notion that we would be a flying petrol tank for over two thousand miles gave me a strange feeling in the stomach. ‘Do we have a dummy run to see if we can get off with such a load?’
‘We’ve got the longest runway in the world, Adcock, a thousand miles, if the sea’s calm enough. Let me worry about that. I’ve worked things out, never you fear.’
‘It’s safer to chug along with an extra ton or two of petrol than carry the same in depth-charges,’ Rose said to me as he opened a stubby tin of Flowerdew’s Cut Golden Bar and refilled his pipe. He smoked contentedly, but to puff such twist in the same room as Wilcox seemed inconsiderate, though I don’t suppose he would have coughed much less without it. Bennett advised him to sit by the open window, but he didn’t bother, saying his cough was sure to go as soon as the old kite got above the clouds.
Appleyard, one of the gunners, wanted to know how much airborne time we’d need before reaching Freemantle. He had a cousin there. Rose nodded, the scarred side of his face towards the skipper: ‘Thirty-eight hours, give or take a day or two!’
Bennett came out of his reverie. ‘How long we stay at Kerguelen depends on all of you. Intelligent co-operation is what I want, like in the good old days. We’re a bit rusty, but we’ll shine up. As captain of this enterprise – and God help me with such a shower – even I may have to lend a hand when it comes to picking up the goods at Kerguelen.’
‘What goods?’
‘That’s between me and the company. Till we get on board, it’s classified gen.’
I asked if there was a W/T met. station on the island.
‘You’ll be briefed on that later. But the short answer is no.’
‘We’ll hope for calm weather,’ Rose said, ‘and a good anchorage.’
‘I’ll pray fervently for both,’ said Nash.
It all sounded, Appleyard observed, that a few prayers might not be out of order.
‘Prayers never did an air gunner any harm,’ Bennett said. ‘As for myself, I muttered a quick one to the old God every time I had to get you lot off the ground. And gave special thanks when I got back.’
Armatage, another gunner, sat upright in the heavily upholstered chair. He had fair wavy hair and a handlebar moustache, as if he had always hoped to be taken from a distance for a pilot or navigator, which would at least have given a short burst of glory before whoever it was got close enough to see the badge on his battledress. He had worked in the office of an insurance company, but his spare time was given to running a youth club from which he led expeditions across Dartmoor at Easter ‘when conditions can be fair to Arctic’ and summer ‘when it wasn’t so good either.’ Nash told me he had lost his job after something he’d done had got into the newspapers.
‘Whoever thought up this stunt must have been round the bend,’ he shouted. ‘If I don’t do a bunk it’s only because I’m half way up the zig-zags already.’ Then he laughed, a bray without humour, and lay back with irritation that would not let him say more.
Maybe he had spoken for more than himself, but before anyone could say so Bennett put in that if he lacked moral fibre he had better go now, and that if he didn’t he had better shut up.
‘He was often like that,’ Rose said. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘Too bloody well,’ said Nash.
‘He was all right at the first upshot of flak, though.’
Armatage didn’t answer.
‘In view of the circumstances,’ Bennett said, ‘you can say goodbye to any celebratory booze-up, or aircrew hanky-panky the night before we go on board for take-off. Have your party, if you must, but make it at least twenty-four hours prior to getting your clearance chits signed from this hotel. In which case I might join you. You’ll collect more than soldiers’ pay when this operation is over, and you can go to pieces then if you care to. But for the trip, you’ll be like teetotal parsons – if they ever existed – keeping an eye on each other to make sure there’s no flouting that one. I want no hymn singing, though, on your part, nor any need for the riot act to be read on mine. We’ve got a tricky job, I don’t mind telling you, and we want to come through successfully. Once we’re airborne we’ll fall into our allotted places, even Mr Adcock, who hasn’t flown with us before, so that after a few hours up top it’ll seem as if we’ve never had a break from the last time we were together. Twenty hours is a long run, and I won’t say that anybody caught slipping into the land of nod will be thrown overboard; but I will frown severely, and he might get his head knocked off. As for you gunners, you won’t be playing poker in the galley, either. Nash will see to that. You’ll keep your eyes peeled, and eat carrot-pudding in case any strange or otherwise unexplainable object comes into view. I want as sharp a lookout as for JU88s when flying up Happy Valley or across Biscay. Close to the Islands, the more you might have to do in the gunnery line, and when we land it’ll be sleeves rolled up for everyone.’
The sooner we eight luminaries were into the wide blue yonder the better; then at least I would have no further illusions about being followed. I wondered whether I was the only one, and though we were as friendly as a crew should be there seemed no sane opening for me to broach the matter. If my fears reached Bennett he might throw me off the job as unsuitable, especially if the work we were about to undertake was as legitimate as he made out.
15
In a ship without guns there was a superfluity of gunners. The pilot, the navigator, the flight-engineer and the wireless operator had well-defined tasks, but so many gunners worried me – though no one else seemed perturbed. Perhaps they assumed that having filled such a role during the war, ‘gunner’ was now an identification tag, no more than a badge stitched under the lapel of jacket or windcheater.
All of us belonged to a crew in which no member could claim more importance than the next, but gunners were in the majority, which was valid only if they were to be employed as look-outs, or loaders, or stewards, or riggers, or bowmen, or whatever work Bennett was to find necessary. In which case it was easy to explain their presence.